Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), the founding father of genetics, was an
Austrian monk who studied the inheritance of garden pea plants. Through his studies, Mendel followed the
path of seven specific traits of the pea plant, carefully studying one at a
time to prevent his work from getting too complicated (a point that many
modern geneticist failed to follow up on).
He started by creating plants with pure lines, or plants that
have the same characteristic (e.g. a height of about 6 feet). Likewise, he created pure lines of the
same pea plant, but only with ones that had a height of 1 foot. These pure lines were created by letting
the plant self-pollinate through several generations. Once they were established, Mendel
cross-pollinated the short and tall plants, collected the seeds, and then
planted them. Much to his surprise,
each plant that grew developed the tall trait, despite the fact that they had
come from both a tall and short parent plant. He called all plants that came from both tall and short parents
hybrid tall. From this, Mendel
developed his law of Dominance.
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